This invention relates to a system using a lightweight expandable fuel container. More particularly, this invention relates to a cost effective fuel-replenishing system having expandable, inflatable bladders filled with petroleum products that are capable of being towed through water to remote places to supply fuel where needed.
Most modern navies are responsible for transporting personnel and their equipment over extended supply lines to distant objectives ashore. Because of the distances involved, refueling of ships and other craft often is required during transit.
One well known method to assure sufficient refueling capability is to deploy one or more ships as dedicated tanker ships at designated re-fueling depots along the transit route to facilitate ship-to-ship refueling. Troop and supply laden ships and other craft in need of refueling pull alongside or behind each tanker ship at the refueling depots. The tanker ship and ships and craft then are anchored together with tethers and large floating bumpers, and fuel lines are passed from one craft to the other. Careful maneuvering on the part of all craft is necessary to keep the operation safe such that fuel lines and tethers do not break or that metal hulled craft do not bang into one another causing structural damage.
Aside from the fact that this refueling scenario is intensive to coordinate, is time consuming, and may be tactically dangerous, the ships and personnel that are dedicated to carrying the fuel supply can be dispersed to different depots for undue periods of time. As a consequence, they cannot be available to support other logistics missions that they were originally designed to perform. Another problem is that some of the craft being used as refueling tankers typically are not designed for such missions and have to be modified or fitted with kits to perform the function of being a tanker/fuel depot. A further limitation of this scenario is that the tanker craft usually are expensive and irreplaceable assets that should not be put in harms way susceptible to enemy fire while acting simply as an at-sea fuel tank.
Thus, in accordance with this inventive concept, a need has been recognized in the state of the art for an inexpensive, relatively disposable system and a method of covertly or clandestinely pre-positioning fuel that provides an autonomous refueling depot at the exact location it is needed to support advancing expeditionary forces, to free up other navy craft for other high value missions that they were originally designed to support.